Friday, February 17, 2017

"In almost any Church one cares to choose there is and has long been an absolute minimum of the teaching and practice of mystical religion. Even for the intelligent congregations Church teaching and preaching is concerned almost exclusively with a multitude of minor matters having mostly to do with the smaller points of morality or in liberal Protestant churches, with politics and vague ethical principles. One may go even further and state that the whole atmosphere and attitude of modern Church religion impresses the modern mind as having little or nothing to do with the Reality which controls and causes our universe. Science has given to our age a most impressive view of this universe, and this demands an equivalently wonderful and splendid conception of God together with an appropriate manner of worship. In comparison with this view of the universe, which, without the aid of religion, has so staggered man's thought of God as to stop it, present-day Church religion seems utterly paltry."--Alan Watts, Behold the Spirit